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8On Representing ContentProtoSociology 17 101-118. 2002.I consider whether the content of a speech act is best represented by a set of possible worlds or by an ordered set containing the individual and properties the speech act is about. I argue that there is nothing in such contents that an ordered set can represent that a set of worlds cannot. In particular, both can be used to capture what is distinctive about singular propositions. But a set of worlds better represents content in cases where the content concerns individuals that no longer exist. …Read more
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93Belief Ascription and Context DependencePhilosophy Compass 6 (12): 902-911. 2011.This article considers the question whether belief ascriptions exhibit context dependence. I first distinguish two potential forms of context dependence in belief ascription. Propositional context dependence concerns what the subject believes, whereas attitudinal context dependence concerns what it is to believe a proposition. I then discuss three potential sources of PCD and two potential sources of ACD. Given the nature of this article, my discussion will provide only an overview of these vari…Read more
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157Understanding and beliefPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 559-580. 1998.A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is then argued that…Read more
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127Knowledge and understandingMind and Language 16 (5). 2001.Some philosophical proposals seem to die hard. In a recent paper, Jason Stanley has worked to resurrect the description theory of reference, at least as it might apply to natural kind terms like ‘elm’ (Stanley, 1999). The theory’s founding idea is that to understand ‘elm’ one must know a uniquely identifying truth about elms. Famously, Hilary Putnam showed that ordinary users of ‘elm’ may understand it while lacking such knowledge, and may even be unable to distinguish elms from beeches (Putnam,…Read more
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147Common ground and modal disagreementIn H. V. Hanson (ed.), Dissensus and the Search for Common Ground, . pp. 134-143. 2007.The common ground in an inquiry consists of what the participants agree on, at least for the sake of the inquiry. The relations between the factual and linguistic components of common ground are notoriously difficult to trace. I clarify them by exploring how modal disagreements – disagreements about how things might be – interact with the linguistic and the factual common ground. I argue that modal agreement is essential to common ground of any kind.
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58Rule-Following and Realism (review)Philosophical Review 108 (3): 425. 1999.Ebbs’s aim is to “come to terms with and move beyond currently entrenched ways of looking at central topics in the philosophy of language and mind”. The entrenched perspectives are Metaphysical Realism, the view that “we can make ‘objective’ assertions only if we can ‘grasp’ metaphysically independent ‘truth conditions”’, and Scientific Naturalism, “Quine’s view that ‘it is within science itself that reality is to be identified and described”’. Ebbs intends to replace these with what he calls th…Read more
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56Gabriel Segal, a slim book about narrow content(mit press, 2000), 177 pp (review)Noûs 37 (4): 724-745. 2003.The Mind-Body problem is the problem of saying how a person’s mental states and events relate to his bodily ones. How does Oscar’s believing that water is cold relate to the states of his body? Is it itself a bodily state, perhaps a state of his brain or nervous system? If not, does it nonetheless depend on such states? Or is his believing that water is cold independent of his bodily states? And, crucially, what are the notions of dependence and independence at issue here?
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16Belief and Agency (edited book)University of Calgary Press. 2011."Most of the papers in this volume (all except for those by Steinberg, Haase, and Street) were presented at a conference...at Ryerson University in October of 2010."--p. xvii.
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110Understanding, justification and the a prioriPhilosophical Studies 87 (2): 119-141. 1997.What I wish to consider here is how understanding something is related to the justification of beliefs about what it means. Suppose, for instance, that S understands the name “Clinton” and has a justified belief that it names Clinton. How is S’s understanding related to that belief’s justification? Or suppose that S understands the sentence “Clinton is President”, or Jones’ assertive utterance of it, and has a justified belief that that sentence expresses the proposition that Clinton is President, o…Read more
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120Mind-brain identity and the nature of statesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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18Review of *Context* Robert Stalnaker new York: Oxford university press, 2014; 248 pp.; $52.50 (review)Dialogue 55 (2). 2016.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
3 more
Belief |
Desire |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Action |
Metaphysics of Mind |
Moral Realism |
History of Meta-Ethics, Misc |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |